These last few weeks I've been reading and re-reading every word I've written in my journal since my separation. The thing I want most in moving back in with my ex is to hold tight to me, not forget one step of this journey or the tangles of Witches Broom I belly-crawled through to get here.

I moved out when Lila was 23 months old. In the early morning hours of her second birthday I did something huge. As I move back into life with her dad, the one thing I most want to keep is this:

21 Nov. 2006

It's warm tonight. Sweet condensation pooling on the windows. Moist chocolate smells baking in the oven. Home. Forty-one days out and 41 days in, this is finally my home.

I'm sitting in the same the spot I sat last night, back curved into cushy blue glider, feet on a chair under the table, one leg crossed over the other, keyboard on my lap, fingers on the keys, monitor claiming half the real estate on my kitchen table. Same as last night and the night before that and every night for the last five-and-a-half weeks. And, not the same at all. Everywhere I look, art and love and pieces of me collected on the journey color the walls with stories spoken across miles and years.

Decades.

A lifetime.

Picture of me, eight or nine months old, on my belly in the crib. Mounted poster of two tiny Zapotec women working a huge loom in a Oaxacan weaving village. Birthing necklaces strung bead by bead in the weeks before my daughters arrived. Framed picture I snapped outside the house where I spent years watching the corn grow one summer, its dry grass and weeds growing through a wrought iron wheel topped with horse head against the wide Ohio sky. (I still see past the edges to horses grazing alfalfa in pastures that ease down to the muddy Kokosing River. State Route 95, two narrow lanes stretch the rolling hills into town, just past the sign: "Welcome to Fredericktown: Birthplace of the Future Farmers of America Jacket and Luke Perry.")

For weeks it was easier to leave this stuff boxed and let the white walls stare me into an uneasy truce; stay but don't get comfortable. Nothing about this place was mine. Every night a strange presence joined me in the bathroom, caught in the steam of my nightly soak.

"I have a ghost," I tell my best friend. "I feel it in the bathroom."

Then I realize the presence haunting me is me. More foreign and frightening than any apparition.

In a crowded pub we chomp through a plate of nachos set with a thick mortar of cheese and beans and onions, and olives and jalapeno slices I pile around the edge of my plate. Sip Cab and beer and watch traffic pass while we talk about the lives we're ducking out of for a few minutes in this bar.

I say, "Last night I made myself dinner for the first time since I moved." Run my finger along the edge of the wine glass for the whistle. "I mean, I cook for Roxie and Lila, but I haven't cooked for myself. I spend as little time there as I can and I realized last night that I just can't let myself relax. It's not my home. It won't ever be my home."

Out of the bar and into the cold we head back to my place. Hammer and a nail: a mask is up. Hammer and a nail: the mirror another friend made is up. Hammer and a nail: the necklaces are up. Hammer and a nail: this place is finally mine. My home. She leaves and I sit on the futon and let myself be still

And, I know.

Leaving, moving out, was just one step and settling, moving in, is another much more treacherous kind of reckoning.

Step by step by step by step, we go. Stepping lightly.

With each faltering lurch forward, I give myself permission.

I give myself permission to relax.

I give myself permission to let go.

I give myself permission to move on and move in.

I give myself permission to be.

Sitting here, computer creaking quietly while chocolate cake cools on the counter, this is my promise: Now and forever, I give myself permission.